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enA strategic response to Trump’s “ripping off the Band-Aid” to workers’ health and safety: Defense of the status quo ante is not enoughhttps://scienceblogs.com/thepumphandle/2017/02/08/a-strategic-response-to-trumps-ripping-off-the-band-aid-to-workers-health-and-safety-defense-of-the-status-quo-ante-is-not-enough
<span>A strategic response to Trump’s “ripping off the Band-Aid” to workers’ health and safety: Defense of the status quo ante is not enough</span>
<div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field--item"><p>By Garrett Brown, MPH, CIH and Deeg Gold, MPH CIH</p>
<p>In late January, Donald Trump’s press secretary described his immigration and refugee Executive Order as “ripping off the Band-Aid” to get at immigrants. The next week, Trump issued another Executive Order on regulations and is preparing other measures to “rip off the Band-Aid” to get at worker health and safety. Our strategic response has to be more than simply defending the <em>status quo ante</em>; we have to rebuild the social movement that was powerful enough 50 years ago to force another right-wing Republican president, Richard Nixon, to support and sign the OSH Act in the first place.</p>
<p>Part of this strategic response has to be recognize that millions of workers in the United States were never covered by <u>any</u> Band-Aid, and that the workplace safety net was and is full of gaping holes.</p>
<p>Of course, the necessary tactical response is to defend the gains that have been made over those 46 years, as incomplete as they are, to the best of our ability. We should recognize <a href="http://www.nelp.org/content/uploads/NELP-Worker-Safey-Health-in-Obama-Years.pdf">the valiant efforts</a> of David Michaels, Jordan Barab and many others at Fed OSHA over the last eight years to move the ball forward in spite of many obstacles, including those created by the Obama Administration itself.</p>
<p>But we also need to take into consideration the fact that for millions of workers, federal and state OSHA programs have not been able to protect them, and really have not been part of their working lives. The factors involved in this reality include:</p>
<ul><li>The exclusion of millions of public sector workers under Fed OSHA;</li>
<li>The real-world context where millions of workers, especially immigrants but also other vulnerable workers, are too afraid, threatened and intimidated to contact OSHA no matter how unsafe and unhealthy their workplace;</li>
<li>Fed OSHA and state regulations of chemical exposures and other health regulations that are completely out of date, and barely enforced in any case;</li>
<li>Some state plans (e.g. <a href="http://www.coshnetwork.org/many-state-run-agencies-are-not-adequately-protecting-workers">UT, NV and NC</a>) that were established precisely to avoid federal jurisdiction and any possibility of effective enforcement by establishing a state plan;</li>
<li>The lack of enforcement resources at both federal and state levels means that the “hammer of regulatory enforcement” is not nearly as effective, or scary, as the employers claim.</li>
</ul><p>What’s needed is a reframing of our thinking about how to protect workers’ health and safety to rely less on government bureaucracies and their political overlords, and more on what workers and their organizations can do themselves on the shop floor, more on collaboration with environmentalists, community organizations and social justice activists; and more on the pressure that all these allies working together can exert on regulatory agencies no matter who is in charge.</p>
<p>The current regulatory framework for occupational safety and health came after the industrial bloodbath during World War II and the following two decades. The social movements of the 1960s included a lot of workplace organizing both within and outside of established unions, more often led by rank and file members than by union officials.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Coal_Mine_Health_and_Safety_Act_of_1969">Mine Safety</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_Safety_and_Health_Act_(United_States)">OSH </a>Acts Acts were passed as the result of a broad social movement that united many allies, and were preceded by a wave of strikes, demonstrations and other protests in the late 1960s. The Federal Coal Mine Safety and Health Act was passed in 1969 after coal miners in West Virginia, organized by the <a href="http://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/515">Black Lung Association</a> outside of the unresponsive United Mine Workers union controlled by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._A._Boyle">President Tony Boyle</a>, walked off the job and marched onto the state capitol demanding compensation.</p>
<p>From 1968 to 1970 the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM), and other groups in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Revolutionary_Black_Workers">League of Revolutionary Black Workers</a> led wildcat walkouts over working conditions in Detroit auto plants. The Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers, joined by other unions such as the International Association of Machinists, mobilized their members in political campaigns, conducted strikes and other job actions at work, and joined public health advocates in lobbying for a national law to create a new enforcement agency for occupational safety and health.</p>
<p>Environmentalists, recognizing that pollution starts in the workplace and then moves out into the community and nature, supported “OHS” as well as “EHS” efforts. Social justice organizations recognized that the people (workers and communities) most adversely affected by unsafe and unhealthy working conditions were people of color and women.</p>
<p>For the first 20 years of OSHA existence, the official government regulations were matched by the creation of union health and safety departments with OHS professionals who helped raised the consciousness of their members and other working people, worked to pass more regulatory protections, and rode herd on employers and government agencies alike to meet their responsibilities to protect workers on the job.</p>
<p>For the last 20 years, the tide has gone in the other direction as economic crisis and globalization weakened unions, which then (mistakenly) allowed their H&S departments to become a shadow of their former selves. Also a way of thinking arose in many unions, and society at large, that workplace health and safety – “That’s OSHA job.” Workers’ health and safety became a government function to be administered by a government bureaucracy led by political appointees, with minimal participation by the affected workers.</p>
<p>So it is not surprising that occupational health and safety is essentially an orphan (with some notable parental exceptions) about to be set upon by the ferocious hounds of deregulation.</p>
<p>To defend ourselves – but to also fight for and achieve a more inclusive, more protective OHS system in the United States – we should look back 50 years and rebuild the social movement that got us this far.</p>
<p>Of course, the times and the context have changed. The union movement <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm">is much smaller</a> – with 93% of private sector workers having no union protection at all – and new types of jobs (with hazards of their own, of course) that have replaced or altered the workplaces of 50 years ago. Some unions, such as the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United, the Service Employee’s International Union, and the United Steel Workers are providing leadership in organized labor, as OCAW did in the past.</p>
<p>Although there are two dozen functioning <a href="http://www.coshnetwork.org">COSH groups</a>, at this time rank and file organizing within the unions, such as coal miners did with the Black Lung Association, has not yet emerged, despite the variety of hazards faced by today’s workforce and the desperate need to fix them.</p>
<p>But today we have many potential allies, and Trump’s broad assault will generate more. These include environmentalists, immigrant rights organizations, and social justice activists of many genders and colors. These also include workers’ centers and labor issue campaigns, such as “Fight for Fifteen,” which involve both organized and unorganized workers. We need to look for people in motion, especially the young, who go to work and face hazards there every day, and then are exposed to the hazards that spill out of other workplaces into their communities.</p>
<p>We need to promote the concept that workers’ health and safety cannot just be left to government bureaucracies, but that workers and communities acting in their own name to protect themselves, are an essential and irreplaceable part of an effective OHS/EHS system that includes government agencies and regulatory enforcement, but so much more.</p>
<p>As OHS professionals, we think our tasks include:</p>
<ul><li>Strengthening the COSH network and building new COSH groups;</li>
<li>collaborating with worker organizations – unions but also workers’ centers, day laborers’ organizations and similar groups – to increase the capacity, skills and confidence of these organizations and their members in the area of occupational health and safety ; and</li>
<li>collaborating with environmental and community organizations to link occupational and environmental health issues and to work jointly on solutions.</li>
</ul><p>In the labor context, union members concerned with workplace safety might consider:</p>
<ul><li>Prioritizing again health and safety provisions in union contracts and in contract enforcement on the shop floor;</li>
<li>Conducting job actions of various types to win and enforce contract H&S language;</li>
<li>Supporting the rebuilding of the union health and safety departments for member education, contract negotiation, and political action;</li>
<li>Highlighting workplace H&S as an organizing theme to win new members to the unions and to strengthen the union’s own capacity to protect worker health.</li>
</ul><p>There already have been successful examples of these approaches in California. After the 2012 fire at Chevron’s Richmond oil refinery, a coalition of major environmental, community and labor groups <a href="http://insidecalosha.org/policy-management/">have worked together</a> for several years to improve worker – and thereby community – safety at the state’s 15 refineries and new, stronger regulations are nearing final consideration.</p>
<p>Workplace health and safety has been used as a successful organizing campaign theme by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union with <a href="http://www.ilwu.org/recycling-workers-celebrate-two-years-of-success/">recycling workers in Oakland, CA</a>, by the United Steel Workers union with car washers in Los Angeles (<a href="http://www.cleancarwashcampaign.org">here</a>, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/akito-yoshikane/la-car-wash-union_b_1035262.html">here</a>), and by the Warehouse Worker Resource Center in Ontario, CA (<a href="http://www.warehouseworkers.org">here</a>, <a href="http://www.fairwarning.org/2012/03/lawsuit-investigations-cite-abuse-of-workers-in-warehouse-empire/">here</a>.)</p>
<p>These positive examples can be replicated elsewhere as there is no shortage of workers and communities whose health and safety are threatened on both sides of the fence line.</p>
<p>As the Trump Administration prepares to render Fed OSHA as ineffective as possible, state plans in place like California, Oregon and Washington have a special responsibility to move the ball forward in spite of a roll-back on a federal level. Many aspects of these state plans are already more protective than Fed OSHA, and progress can be made a state level to set the example and model a more effective federal program.</p>
<p>California has several characteristics that OHS activists should take advantage of – the Democratic party has the Governor’s Mansion and a super-majority of 2/3rds of the state legislature – and the power to raise funds and approve legislation to implement new programs. Moreover, all the major political leaders in the state, including the governor, have declared their “rejection of the Trump agenda” and sworn to “protect the people of California” against Trump policies.</p>
<p>Among the demands that can be made on these California politicians are that:</p>
<ul><li>Cal/OSHA make full use of authorized funding and not “leave money on the table” when it comes to worker protection as has happened over the last 18 months (at least $6 million) at Cal/OSHA;</li>
<li>The Governor fill the two vacancies on the seven-member Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board (vacancies have been open since December 2015), because the vacancies mean that approval of any of the important pending standards would require a near-unanimous vote;</li>
<li>The major workplace health regulations now in development (lead, indoor heat, workplace violence) not be gutted in the standard-setting process by industry pressure, or by a new state economic analysis requirement for “major regulations” that forces limits on the scope and impact of new regulations to stay below the monetary threshold of “major” regs to avoid the onerous and time-consuming cost-benefit analysis; and</li>
<li>Cal/OSHA use its expanded enforcement resources to prioritize vulnerable workers like Los Angeles garment workers or Central Valley poultry and slaughterhouse workers, and to partner with communities and worker organizations to bring lasting improvements in working conditions for all workers in California.</li>
</ul><p>There is an old adage that points out that the Chinese word for “crisis” consists of two characters: “danger” and “opportunity.” In the evolving crisis our country is now experiencing, it is not difficult to see the many dangers on the horizon. But it is also important to not lose sight that there are many opportunities for uniting allies to defend our rights, to retrace our steps to protect workers, and to bring workers and communities back into the center of occupational and environmental health.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em><strong>Garrett Brown</strong> is a certified industrial hygienist who worked for Cal/OSHA for 20 years as a field Compliance Safety and Health Officer and then served as Special Assistant to the Chief of the Division before retiring in 2014. He has also been the volunteer Coordinator of the Maquiladora Health & Safety Support Network since 1993 and has coordinated projects in Bangladesh, Central America, China, Dominican Republic, Indonesia, Mexico and Vietnam. </em></p>
<p><em><strong>Deeg Gold</strong> is a certified industrial hygienist who worked for Cal/OSHA for 21 years starting as a field compliance officer, and retiring as deputy chief for health. Prior to returning to school and working at Cal/OSHA Deeg was a shop steward and rank-and-file health and safety activist in her union.</em></p>
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<span><a title="View user profile." href="https://scienceblogs.com/author/garrettbrown" lang="" about="https://scienceblogs.com/author/garrettbrown" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="" xml:lang="">garrettbrown</a></span>
<span>Wed, 02/08/2017 - 11:15</span>
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<section></section><ul class="links inline list-inline"><li class="comment-forbidden"><a href="https://scienceblogs.com/user/login?destination=/thepumphandle/2017/02/08/a-strategic-response-to-trumps-ripping-off-the-band-aid-to-workers-health-and-safety-defense-of-the-status-quo-ante-is-not-enough%23comment-form">Log in</a> to post comments</li></ul>Wed, 08 Feb 2017 16:15:15 +0000garrettbrown62788 at https://scienceblogs.comOccupational Health News Rounduphttps://scienceblogs.com/thepumphandle/2016/04/12/occupational-health-news-roundup-218
<span>Occupational Health News Roundup</span>
<div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field--item"><p>At <a href="https://www.revealnews.org/article/holes-in-oversight-leave-california-workers-comp-vulnerable-to-fraud/">Reveal</a>, Christina Jewett investigates the gaping holes in California’s workers’ compensation system that make it so vulnerable to fraud and leave workers in the dark about the bogus care being charged in their names. She begins the article comparing the workers’ comp system to Medicare:</p>
<blockquote><p>When Medicare makes rules, it has a strong incentive to encourage doctors, pharmacists and others to follow them: money.</p>
<p>The purse strings are not held nearly as tightly in California’s workers’ compensation system, in which a division of power creates the first major hurdle.</p>
<p>Lawmakers make rules. The state’s Department of Industrial Relations administers workers’ compensation. Judges issue orders in workers’ compensation courts. Medical boards and commissions oversee doctors, pharmacists and chiropractors. And a market of more than 300 insurers and self-insured employers do the day-to-day job of deciding which medical bills to pay and which claims to fight.</p>
<p>“When everyone is responsible, no one is,” said Kate Zimmermann, a Kern County prosecutor who has combated workers’ compensation fraud for eight years. “He who has the gold can write the rules. … If you have one checkbook, you can say, ‘If you want the check, this is how.’”</p></blockquote>
<p>And because workers never see a summary of services and charges related to their workers’ comp care, they don’t have the information they need to flag fraudulent care, the article states. For instance, Jewett interviewed a worker who had requested her medical records only to find that her provider had billed for transportation and language interpretation — services the worker hadn’t used.</p>
<p>Throughout the article, Jewett looks to Medicare to illustrate how that health care system has prevented fraud. An example: the Medicare program bans providers who’ve been convicted of defrauding a health care program. California’s workers’ comp system, on the other hand, does not. She writes:</p>
<blockquote><p>But those banned providers have no problem starting a second career in California’s workers’ compensation system.</p>
<p>Medicare banned Dr. Thomas Heric in 2006 after he pleaded guilty to charges related to writing reports based on diagnostic tests that turned out to be fraudulent. In his letter to the judge who sentenced him, Heric pledged that going forward, he would use “whatever talents I may have in service to the community.”</p>
<p>Heric then found a new line of work in the workers’ compensation medical system. His job was to review data on injured workers’ sleep patterns and issue reports needed to bill insurers.</p>
<p>Five years later, prosecutors accused Heric of fraud again. They say he was writing virtually identical reports that gave rise to sham billing. One expert testified in court that Heric’s sleep-study reports were so bad that they failed to address one worker’s serious breathing problems for months, a lapse that he said could harm “the general public.”</p></blockquote>
<p>To read the full article, visit <a href="https://www.revealnews.org/article/holes-in-oversight-leave-california-workers-comp-vulnerable-to-fraud/">Reveal</a>.</p>
<p>In other news:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.fairwarning.org/2016/04/recycling/">Fair Warning</a>: Brian Joseph investigates the dangerous conditions that workers face in the recycling industry, beginning the story with worker Erik Hilario, 19, who died in a fire at Newell Recycling in Georgia. The article notes that an analysis of OSHA records found that scrap yards and sorting facilities receive about 80 percent more citations per inspection than the average inspected workplace. In addition, recycling drop-off centers have become somewhat notorious for wage violations — for instance, labor officials in California compared wage theft problems in the industry to those typically found in garment sweatshops and in the agricultural industry. Joseph writes: “One of the largest sectors in recycling, scrap yards, has long had high fatality and injury rates. In 2014 its fatality rate was 20.8 deaths per 100,000 full-time workers, more than nine times higher than manufacturing workers overall. The same year, garbage and recycling collectors had the fifth-highest fatality rate among the dozens of occupations analyzed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. No one tracks how many workers die across all recycling sectors. But at scrap yards and sorting facilities, at least 313 recycling workers were killed on the job from 2003 to 2014, according to the BLS.”</p>
<p><a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/cityhall/la-me-union-minimum-wage-20160410-story.html"><em>Los Angeles Times</em></a>: Peter Jamison explores the impact of union exemptions included in a number of local minimum wage hikes across California. He starts the story with bellhop Bill Martinez, who could have seen a 71 percent boost in his paycheck after Los Angeles passed a law raising the minimum hourly wage at large hotels to $15.37. But because the law included an exemption for union hotels, Martinez is now making less than nonunion workers. The exemptions are drawing a good bit of outrage, Jamison reports, including criticism from fellow unions. Supporters say the exemptions could make employers more amenable to unionization and enables unions to negotiate better packages and benefits for members. Jamison reports: “Even union workers exempted by the ordinances of L.A. and other cities will see their pay gradually rise under the state minimum wage increase. However, because of the law's incremental rollout — the statewide minimum will not reach $15 until 2022 — they are still positioned to miss out on tens of thousands of dollars compared with their non-union counterparts.”</p>
<p><em><a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-paid-sick-leave-task-force-0403-biz-20160401-story.html">Chicago Tribune</a></em>: Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz reports that Chicago is poised to join the growing number of cities nationwide that now require paid sick leave for workers. The city’s Working Families Task Force released a report earlier this month recommending that Chicago workers be able to accrue at least five paid sick days every year. The report, which is intended to serve as a blueprint toward an eventual city ordinance, also found that offering paid sick leave would add about 0.7 to 1.5 percent in labor costs for most employers. Not surprisingly, the local Chamber of Commerce is opposing a sick leave ordinance. Elejalde-Ruiz writes: “A report from Women Employed estimated 460,000 private-sector workers in Chicago don't have access to paid sick days. Another report, from the National Partnership for Women & Families, put the number at 2.1 million people in Illinois.”</p>
<p><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/kiss-my-ass-miners_us_5706c643e4b0537661892e6c?9zw8dolx8h8xe0zfr">Huffington Post</a>: Dave Jamieson reports that a judge has ordered that two coal miners be reinstated after being fired for insulting Bob Murray, CEO of Murray Energy. The cases involves a bonus program at one of Murray Energy’s coal mines in West Virginia in which miners could earn extra pay if they avoided safety violations and achieved production goals. United Mine Workers of America opposed the program, arguing that it conflicted with safety goals and could discourage workers from reporting safety problems. Two miners made their opposition to the bonus program well known, writing on their voided bonus checks: “Kiss My Ass Bob” and “Eat Shit Bob.” Fortunately, a judge sided with the fired miners. Jamieson reports: “And as far as the judge is concerned, the miners had a legal right to say as much. Not because they’re entitled to free speech — but because they have a right under the law to band together to improve their working conditions.”</p>
<p><em>Kim Krisberg is a freelance public health writer living in Austin, Texas, and has been writing about public health for nearly 15 years.</em></p>
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<span><a title="View user profile." href="https://scienceblogs.com/author/kkrisberg" lang="" about="https://scienceblogs.com/author/kkrisberg" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="" xml:lang="">kkrisberg</a></span>
<span>Tue, 04/12/2016 - 12:28</span>
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<section></section><ul class="links inline list-inline"><li class="comment-forbidden"><a href="https://scienceblogs.com/user/login?destination=/thepumphandle/2016/04/12/occupational-health-news-roundup-218%23comment-form">Log in</a> to post comments</li></ul>Tue, 12 Apr 2016 16:28:35 +0000kkrisberg62591 at https://scienceblogs.comOccupational Health News Rounduphttps://scienceblogs.com/thepumphandle/2016/02/02/occupational-health-news-roundup-213
<span>Occupational Health News Roundup</span>
<div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field--item"><p>At <a href="http://www.npr.org/2016/01/21/460257932/federal-workplace-law-fails-to-protect-employees-left-out-of-workers-compensatio">NPR</a>, reporter Howard Berkes writes about the failure of federal laws to protect workers who are left out of the workers’ compensation system. He begins his story with Kevin Schiller, a building engineer for Macy’s department stores for more than two decades. While working in a storage room in a Macy’s in Denton, Texas, a mannequin fell from 12 feet above, hitting Schiller and forcing him to hit his head on a shelf and then the concrete floor. Berkes writes:</p>
<blockquote><p>Schiller has hardly worked since, given persistent headaches, memory loss, disorientation and extreme sensitivity to bright light and loud sound.</p>
<p>He now has to post notes on the front door and refrigerator of his apartment, reminding him to take medications and keep appointments. In case he is stopped by police, he carries a letter from his doctor that says he may appear drunk owing to a head injury.</p>
<p>"I'm next to poverty," Schiller says. "I sit in a dark room. I watch TV like an old 80- or 90-year-old person."</p>
<p>Schiller, 54, is among 1.5 million workers in Texas and Oklahoma who don't have state-regulated workers' compensation to turn to when they're injured on the job. Millions more may join them as more states consider giving employers the right to opt out of state workers' comp systems.</p></blockquote>
<p>Berkes reports that employers who opt out of state workers’ comp systems claim that injured workers are still protected through the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). However, the federal law isn’t providing for hurt workers as employers have promised. In Schiller’s case, if Macy’s hadn’t opted out of the state workers’ comp system, he could have appealed the company’s denial of benefits and received an independent review of his case. But instead, as Berkes reports:</p>
<blockquote><p>Schiller was turned away by the state workers' comp agency and a state court, which cited a mandatory arbitration agreement in the Macy's opt-out plan. Most of the 50 Texas plans obtained by NPR and ProPublica contain mandatory arbitration clauses.</p>
<p>So Schiller first went through an internal appeals process at Macy's, which is typical of opt-out plans in Texas and Oklahoma. People paid by employers decide whether employers are fair. Macy's rejected Schiller's appeals.</p>
<p>"There is no unbiased arbiter, so there can never be any true fairness," says Bob Burke, a former Oklahoma commerce secretary who leads legal challenges to Oklahoma's opt-out law.</p>
<p>Workers theoretically have an easier time taking their cases to federal court. But federal judges, under ERISA, must first determine whether employer decisions are "arbitrary and capricious" and can only reject benefits decisions if employers were unreasonable or did not adhere to their plans.</p>
<p>"You really have to show that [benefits decisions are] irrational or contrary to the terms of the plan," says Karen Handorf, a private ERISA attorney who spent 25 years enforcing ERISA at the Labor Department.</p>
<p>So as long as employers follow their plans, they are likely to prevail. It doesn't matter how unfair the plans or decisions may be.</p></blockquote>
<p>Visit <a href="http://www.npr.org/2016/01/21/460257932/federal-workplace-law-fails-to-protect-employees-left-out-of-workers-compensatio">NPR</a> to read Berkes’ full investigation. The article is part of the <a href="http://www.propublica.org/series/workers-compensation">Insult to Injury</a> series published by NPR and ProPublica.</p>
<p>In other news:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/lead-poisoning-recycled-electronics_us_56abb437e4b077d4fe8dee5b?ir=Technology&section=us_technology">Huffington Post</a>: Reporter Scilla Alecci investigates the impact that toxic lead in electronic recycling facilities has had on workers and their families. She begins her story with Anthony Harrell, who worked in an electronics scraps recycling facility in Cincinnati and ended up exposing his children to the neurological toxin. Harrell said management never alerted him that he’d be handling items containing lead, they never told him to wear protective clothing or to clean his clothes before going home to his family. Alecci writes: “Each time Harrell’s children would touch his hair and hands, or hug him after work, they would inadvertently come in contact with the toxic metal, which is difficult to wash off with normal soap. Jeriyah, now 6, takes medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and has a hard time learning and staying focused. Her doctors say her difficulties stem from lead exposure.”</p>
<p><a href="http://ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/2016/01/29/activists-demand-a-bill-of-rights-for-california-farmworkers/">KQED</a>: Tracie McMillan reports that farmworkers in California’s Ventura and Santa Barbara counties are joining with low-wage food service workers to call for better wages and a new “bill of rights.” The bill of rights demands that existing worker protections be enforced, such as those regarding rest breaks and wage theft, calls for a worker complaint hotline, and asks that jobs be held for pregnant women who need to leave the field to avoid harmful pesticides, among other measures. McMillan reports: “More than 80 groups back the list of demands in the bill, says Lucas Zucker, policy director for Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy, one of the groups leading the charge. The movement has garnered support from the United Farm Workers, Planned Parenthood and Maria Echaveste, who formerly headed up the federal Department of Labor’s wage and hour division.”</p>
<p><em><a href="http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/texas/article/Texas-Open-Carry-gun-advocate-Walmart-worker-6801297.php">Houston Chronicle</a></em>: Reporter Craig Hlavaty writes about a recent incident between a Walmart worker in Devine, Texas, and an open carry advocate who entered the store with a gun. Video shows a store employee asking the customer to show his handgun license. The two argue and the man with the gun eventually leaves. According to the article, Walmart managers are now tasked with the job of confirming that customers who are openly carrying guns have the proper license. Hlavaty reports: “Brian Nick, the senior director of National Media Relations for Walmart, says that this practice is currently in place in Walmart stores across Texas that sell alcohol (in Texas’ case, that means beer and wine).’We will continue to allow customers to carry firearms on Walmart property as long as they follow local, state and federal firearm laws,’ Nick says.”</p>
<p><em><a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/sports/ci_29463352/bittersweet-super-bowl-football-loving-family-stadium-worker">San Jose Mercury News</a></em>: Tracey Kaplan writes about the life and death of Don White, a 63-year-old elevator mechanic who was working in Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., in preparation for this weekend’s Super Bowl game. In 2013, White was working in an elevator shaft when a 14,000-pound counterweight silently dropped toward him, crushing him to death. Cal-OSHA fined White’s employer, Schindler Elevator, $18,000. White was one of two workers killed while working on the stadium in the run-up to the Super Bowl. The second was Ed Erving Lake Jr., 60, who died after a load of rebar tumbled off a forklift and crashed into him. Kaplan writes: “Shortly before Don was killed, he called Wendy (his wife) from his motel room near the stadium in Santa Clara, expressing concern that there were a lot of 'newbie' apprentices on the stadium job. One had dropped a tool down the elevator shaft, gouging his arm.”</p>
<p><em>Kim Krisberg is a freelance public health writer living in Austin, Texas, and has been writing about public health for nearly 15 years.</em></p>
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<span><a title="View user profile." href="https://scienceblogs.com/author/kkrisberg" lang="" about="https://scienceblogs.com/author/kkrisberg" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="" xml:lang="">kkrisberg</a></span>
<span>Tue, 02/02/2016 - 12:56</span>
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<section></section><ul class="links inline list-inline"><li class="comment-forbidden"><a href="https://scienceblogs.com/user/login?destination=/thepumphandle/2016/02/02/occupational-health-news-roundup-213%23comment-form">Log in</a> to post comments</li></ul>Tue, 02 Feb 2016 17:56:00 +0000kkrisberg62547 at https://scienceblogs.comOccupational Health News Rounduphttps://scienceblogs.com/thepumphandle/2015/07/29/occupational-health-news-roundup-201
<span>Occupational Health News Roundup</span>
<div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field--item"><p>Thousands of foreign workers in the U.S. — workers here legally through a visa program that allows employers to import workers from abroad — are abused, imprisoned and exploited. And the government does little to stop it, according to an investigation by <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicagarrison/the-new-american-slavery-invited-to-the-us-foreign-workers-f#.sn68dpzAL">BuzzFeed News</a>. Reporters Jessica Garrison and Ken Besinger and data editor Jeremy Singer-Vine began their investigation with the story of Marisela Valdez and Isy Gonzalez, two H-2 visa workers who peeled crawfish at L.T. West Inc. in Louisiana, where they say their employer took away their passports, sexually harassed them, forced them to work for little wages, and threatened them with deportation for leaving the employer’s property.</p>
<p>According to the article, every year, more than 100,000 people from countries such as Mexico, the Philippines and South Africa travel to the U.S. on an H-2 visa to perform what is typically considered low-wage work. However, the BuzzFeed investigation found that with little oversight and few penalties for exploiting workers, the program ends up leaving vulnerable workers completely at the mercy of their employers. Garrison, Besinger and Singer-Vine write:</p>
<blockquote><p>In interview after interview, current and former guest workers — often on the verge of tears — used the same word to describe their experiences: slavery.</p>
<p>“We live where we work, and we can’t leave,” said Olivia Guzman Garfias, who has been coming to Louisiana as a guest worker from her small town in Mexico since 1997. “We are tied to the company. Our visas are in the company’s name. If the pay and working conditions aren’t as we wish, who can we complain to? We are like modern-day slaves.”</p>
<p>In a statement, the Department of Labor, which is charged with protecting workers and vetting employers seeking visas, said that the H-2 programs “are part of a wider immigration system that is widely acknowledged to be broken, contributing to an uneven playing field where employers who exploit vulnerable workers undermine those who do the right thing.”</p></blockquote>
<p>In its investigation of thousands of court documents and government records, BuzzFeed News found more than 800 workers over the last 10 years had told authorities that their passports were confiscated, they were held against their will or warned not to leave their employer-provided housing. In fact, reporters interviewed one former investigator at the U.S. Department of Labor who said a substantial number of companies that employ H-2 visa workers “maliciously” break labor protection laws. The article states:</p>
<blockquote><p>In the case of the most egregious violations, the Department of Labor has the option of debarring a company — banning it for up to three years from bringing in guest workers. The department maintains a public list of companies under such censure; the current list has 76 names on it. Employers that do work for the federal government can also be debarred from future contracts.</p>
<p>That’s how it works in theory. This March, however, the Government Accountability Office found that the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division failed to conclude more than half its investigations of H-2 employers within the two-year statute of limitations. And many companies that were repeatedly found to abuse workers were nevertheless granted more H-2 visas, lucrative federal contracts, and farm subsidies.</p></blockquote>
<p>Read the full story at <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicagarrison/the-new-american-slavery-invited-to-the-us-foreign-workers-f#.sn68dpzAL">BuzzFeed News</a>.</p>
<p>In other news:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2015/07/handy_a_hot_startup_for_home_cleaning_has_a_big_mess_of_its_own.html">Slate</a>: Alison Griswold writes about Handy, the Uber of house cleaning, and its bumpy start since it launched three years ago. Like Uber, Handy is part of what’s becoming known as the “1099 economy.” Consumers use the Handy app to hire, pay and rate home cleaners, who are not considered official employees of the start-up and so they don't retain the typical benefits and protections that come with traditional employment. While much of the article examines the corporate experience of expanding Handy, Griswold also writes about the experience of workers who do the actual cleaning. For example, the company is being sued in California for a number of alleged labor violations, with the underlying argument that while Handy treats its workers like employees, it classifies them as independent contractors. Griswold writes: “The cleaners I spoke with are torn between warm feelings for a platform that affords them flexibility and relatively good earnings and a frustration that Handy treats them like disposable contractors despite managing them quite closely.”</p>
<p><a href="http://thehill.com/policy/technology/249421-labor-secretary-says-false-choice-between-innovation-and-worker-protection"><em>The Hill</em></a>: U.S. Secretary of Labor Tom Perez weighed in on the “on-demand” economy, saying the discussions surrounding business models such as Uber, which classify their workers as independent contractors, present a “false choice” between worker protections and innovation, according to reporter David McCabe. Perez’s comments came during an interview with the news site Engadget. Acknowledging that the Department of Labor’s ability to address the issue is limited, Perez said: “Many people have discussed the need for a third category of employment. Such a solution would require legislative action from Congress.”</p>
<p><em><a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/zero-waste-remains-a-dirty-business/">The Nation</a></em>: In “Zero Waste Remains a Dirty Business,” Michelle Chen writes that while some cities are reforming their sanitation and recycling systems to reduce the negative impacts of waste, the progressive approach isn’t always being extended to workers. She cites statistics that find waste and recycling collection has the fifth highest rate of fatality in the U.S., with fatalities 10 times more likely than average. Chen cited a <a href="http://www.laane.org/zero-waste-blueprint/">report</a> from LAANE, an anti-poverty nonprofit, that found better labor conditions are typically found in municipally controlled waste management systems or “high road” contracting systems, in which municipalities have exclusive contracts with well-regulated companies. Chen writes: "By contrast, so-called open-permit systems, which employ multiple haulers simultaneously, are rife with inefficient routes and poor labor conditions, because the jobs go to contractors that might just bid to do the job cheaply, not safely, at workers’ expense.”</p>
<p><em><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/07/28/companies-have-found-something-to-give-their-workers-instead-of-raises/?hpid=z1">The Washington Post</a></em>: Reporter Ylan Q. Mui writes that the raise — something we’ve all come to expect in a job — might soon be a relic of the past. Instead, employers are looking for cheaper ways to compensate workers for a job well done, such as one-time bonuses, more time off or paid gym memberships. While Mui talks to many workers who like the non-monetary compensation, she also noted that such benefits are typically only available in so-called white-collared industries. She writes: “The decline of the raise could help explain one of the most frustrating puzzles of the America’s lumbering economic recovery: stagnant wages. Wage growth has been stuck at about 2 percent for the past five years despite a rapid drop in unemployment and a surge in hiring since 2014. Without a bigger bump in their paychecks, many workers feel the recovery remains elusive.”</p>
<p><em>Kim Krisberg is a freelance public health writer living in Austin, Texas, and has been writing about public health for more than a decade.</em></p>
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<span><a title="View user profile." href="https://scienceblogs.com/author/kkrisberg" lang="" about="https://scienceblogs.com/author/kkrisberg" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="" xml:lang="">kkrisberg</a></span>
<span>Tue, 07/28/2015 - 18:45</span>
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<section></section><ul class="links inline list-inline"><li class="comment-forbidden"><a href="https://scienceblogs.com/user/login?destination=/thepumphandle/2015/07/29/occupational-health-news-roundup-201%23comment-form">Log in</a> to post comments</li></ul>Tue, 28 Jul 2015 22:45:14 +0000kkrisberg62411 at https://scienceblogs.comReport explores the dangerous work of recycling: ‘Recycling is the right thing to do, but we have to do it the right way’https://scienceblogs.com/thepumphandle/2015/07/07/report-explores-the-dangerous-work-of-recycling-recycling-is-the-right-thing-to-do-but-we-have-to-do-it-the-right-way
<span>Report explores the dangerous work of recycling: ‘Recycling is the right thing to do, but we have to do it the right way’</span>
<div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field--item"><p>Recycling our garbage is good for the planet, but a new report finds that the workers who process our recyclable materials often face dangerous and unnecessary conditions that put their health and safety at serious risk.</p>
<p>Released in late June, “Sustainable and Safe Recycling: Protecting Workers Who Protect the Planet” chronicles the many hazards that recycling workers encounter on the job as well as ways the recycling industry and local officials can collaborate to improve and ensure worker safety. The report — a collaboration between the <a href="http://www.no-burn.org/index.php">Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives</a>, the <a href="http://www.forworkingfamilies.org/">Partnership for Working Families</a> and the <a href="http://www.coshnetwork.org/">National Council for Occupational Safety and Health</a> (National COSH) — finds that recycling workers are more than twice as likely to be injured at work as the average worker. Between 2011 and 2013, 17 U.S. recycling workers experienced fatal incidences, including being hit by moving vehicles, being crushed or caught in heavy machinery and being buried under mounds of materials. Just days before the report’s release, a worker in Florida was crushed to death in a cardboard compactor at a recycling facility near Orlando.</p>
<p>“Recycling is the right thing to do, but we have to do it the right way,” said Mary Vogel, executive director of National COSH, in a <a href="http://www.no-burn.org/press-release-safe-and-sustainable-recycling">news release</a>. “That means educating and empowering recycling workers and using proven prevention strategies which we know will reduce exposure to hazardous conditions. That’s how we can avoid tragedies like the death of a recycling worker just last (month) in Florida.”</p>
<p>In reviewing OSHA citations, the report’s authors found a number of incidents that illustrate the dangers that recycling workers experience. Just of few of those citations include lack of worker protective gear, unguarded machinery that can cause amputation and other injury, and improper lockout/tagout procedures (these types of procedures prevent the release of hazardous energy while a worker is servicing a machine). The report also cited previous interviews and surveys with recycling workers, who’ve reported ergonomic injuries, being stuck with needles and hit with flying objects, being exposed to so much dust they have difficulty breathing, and being under constant stress to work as quickly as possible.</p>
<p>The report also noted that many recycling facilities rely heavily on workers hired through temporary staffing agencies. Unfortunately, relying on temporary workers too often results in employers shunting their responsibilities to ensure worker health and safety, and that means temp workers typically suffer more frequent injury rates.</p>
<p>The authors compiled the top nine hazards that recycling workers face — “hazards (that) can be mitigated by careful facility and work station design, proper equipment, comprehensive health and safety plans, thorough training, and implementation of systems that include workers in managing health and safety,” the report stated. Among the top nine are working with moving machinery, working for hours at a time in awkward postures, respiratory hazards, falling objects, slips and trips, and exposure to dangerous materials, such as broken glass, used needles, toxic chemicals and animal carcasses. According to the report:</p>
<blockquote><p>Materials Recovery Facility work is inherently unpredictable. Recycling sorting workers are required to visually inspect and sort different categories of recyclable materials. Unlike a factory or manufacturing setting, where upstream inputs are known, the recycling stream is influenced by the misconceptions or errors of millions of consumers who place inappropriate and potentially dangerous objects or substances into the municipal recycling stream. Recycling workers have to quickly identify hazards as they pass by on the sort line and respond appropriately to the hazard.</p></blockquote>
<p>Consider this excerpt, which describes how poor design can result in preventable ergonomic injury:</p>
<blockquote><p>With arms extended, shoulders reaching, hands constantly clasping objects that are moving at a set pace on a vibrating conveyor belt, many workers are twisting, reaching or jumping to toss or place materials into the proper bin or chute. In one study most of the physical complaints of (recycling) workers were associated with the awkward physical postures (Lavoie and Guertin 2001).</p>
<p>The number of workers positioned on a sorting line, sorting line speed, and width of the conveyer belt contribute greatly to the frequency, intensity, and severity of awkward and repetitive postures on the line.</p>
<p>During interviews, some workers described how they had created their own personal hand tools (sticks with bent nails or hooks) to assist them with line sorting jobs and to attempt to relieve the stress of continuous forward reaching. Handmade tools like this indicate that the height and width of conveyer belts and other machines are not well designed.</p></blockquote>
<p>The report offers a number of best practices for reducing and mitigating the risk of injury to recycling workers, such as calling on municipal governments to require contracted recycling companies to submit illness and injury prevention plans and reduce OSHA violations, to prohibit the use of temporary workers, and require inspection access by city personnel. The report also urges local officials to implement public awareness efforts that educate residents on how to properly separate their garbage, which would help reduce the amount of dangerous materials that make it to recycling facilities.</p>
<p>It’s true that recycling is a critical component of efforts to confront dwindling resources as well as reduce waste, pollution and the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change. It’s also good for the economy, with the potential to create millions of new jobs in the recycling sector. But the report warns that “urgent action” is needed to protect the workers who are working to protect the planet.</p>
<p>“If we are serious about solving the world’s ecological crises, we need to invest in protecting the lives and livelihoods of workers whose daily efforts are reducing pollution, conserving precious resources and mitigating climate change,” said Monica Wilson, director of the U.S. and Canada Program at the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives.</p>
<p>To download a full copy of the new report, visit <a href="http://www.coshnetwork.org/recyclesafe">National COSH</a>.</p>
<p><em>Kim Krisberg is a freelance public health writer living in Austin, Texas, and has been writing about public health for more than a decade.</em></p>
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<span>Tue, 07/07/2015 - 12:07</span>
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<section></section><ul class="links inline list-inline"><li class="comment-forbidden"><a href="https://scienceblogs.com/user/login?destination=/thepumphandle/2015/07/07/report-explores-the-dangerous-work-of-recycling-recycling-is-the-right-thing-to-do-but-we-have-to-do-it-the-right-way%23comment-form">Log in</a> to post comments</li></ul>Tue, 07 Jul 2015 16:07:03 +0000kkrisberg62396 at https://scienceblogs.com